openSUSE 12.3 Release Notes

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1. Miscellaneous

2. Installation

2.1. For Detailed Installation Information

2.2. No Network after Installation

Directly after installation, NetworkManager is not started automatically and thus WiFi cannot be configured. To enable networking (WiFi), reboot the machine once manually.

2.3. The Proprietary NVIDIA Driver Requires Users to Have Access to /dev/nvidia* Devices

Default and new users are no longer added to the video group automatically. But the proprietary NVIDIA driver requires users to have access to /dev/nvidia* devices.

Symptoms: OpenGL applications report that they cannot operate on /dev/nvidiactl. Or GNOME only showing a blank screen with a mouse pointer.

Because the NVIDIA driver does not use the usual kernel methods that allow to install ACLs on the device nodes, users have to be added manually to the video group; as root call (replace $USER with the actual username):

usermod -a -G video $USER

2.4. Non-existent Floppy Drive Enabled in BIOS Causes Hang

If a floppy drive support is enabled in the BIOS, but does not actually exist in the machine, it can cause hangs during the installation while YaST is searching for partitions.

To avoid this issue, disable floppy drive support in the BIOS.

3. General

3.1. openSUSE Documentation

In Start-Up, find step-by-step installation instructions, as well as introductions to the KDE and Gnome desktops and to the LibreOffice suite. Also covered are basic administration topics such as deployment and software management and an introduction to the bash shell.

Reference covers administration, and system configuration in detail and explains how to set up various network services.

The Security Guide introduces basic concepts of system security, covering both local and network security aspects.

The System Analysis and Tuning Guide helps with problem detection, resolution and optimization.

Virtualization with KVM offers an introduction to setting up and managing virtualization with KVM, libvirt and QEMU tools.

Find the documentation in /usr/share/doc/manual/opensuse-manuals_$LANG after installing the package opensuse-manuals_$LANG, or online on http://doc.opensuse.org.

3.2. UEFI—Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

Prior to installing openSUSE on a system that boots using UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) you are urgently advised to check for any firmware updates the hardware vendor recommends and, if available, to install such an update. A pre-installed Windows 8 is a strong indication that your system boots using UEFI.

Background: Some UEFI firmware has bugs that cause it to break if too much data gets written to the UEFI storage area. Nobody really knows how much "too much" is, though. openSUSE minimizes the risk by not writing more than the bare minimum required to boot the OS. The minimum means telling the UEFI firmware about the location of the openSUSE boot loader. Upstream Linux Kernel features that use the UEFI storage area for storing boot and crash information (pstore) have been disabled by default. Nevertheless it is recommended to install any firmware updates the hardware vendor recommends.

3.3. Enable Secure Boot in YaST Not Enabled by Default When in Secure Boot Mode

This only affects machines in UEFI mode with secure boot enabled.

YaST does not automatically detect if the machine has secure boot enabled and will therefore install an unsigned bootloader by default. But the unsigned bootloader will not be accepted by the firmware. To have a signed bootloader installed the option "Enable Secure Boot" has to be manually enabled.

3.4. Wrong Bootloader When Installing from a Live Medium in a UEFI Environment

This only affects machines in UEFI mode.

When using the installer on the live medium, YaST does not detect UEFI mode and therefore installs the legacy bootloader. This results in a not bootable system. The bootloader has to be switched from grub2 to grub2-efi manually.

Our double signed shim on openSUSE 12.3 medium may be rejected by future firmwares.

If the openSUSE 12.3 medium does not boot on future secure boot enabled hardware, temporarily disable secure boot, install openSUSE and apply all online updates to get an updated shim.

After installing all updates secure boot can be turned on again.

3.6. Crypted LVM in UEFI Mode Needs /boot Partition

This only affects installations in UEFI mode.

In the partitioning proposal when checking the option to use LVM (which is required for full disk encryption) YaST does not create a separate /boot partition. That means kernel and initrd end up in the (potentially encrypted) LVM container, inaccessible to the boot loader. To get full disk encryption when using UEFI, partitioning has to be done manually.

4. System Upgrade

4.1. Sysvinit Support No Longer Available

sysvinit is no longer supported in this release. It has been deprecated since the last two releases.

It returns "Id=NetworkManager.service" if the NetworkManager service is enabled, otherwise "Id=network.service" and /etc/init.d/network is acting as the network service.

4.3. SYSLOG_DAEMON Variable Removed

The SYSLOG_DAEMON variable has been removed. Previously, it was used to select the syslog daemon. Starting with openSUSE 12.3, only one syslog implementation can be installed at a time on a system and will be selected automatically for usage.

For details, see the syslog(8) manpage.

5. Technical

5.1. Initializing Graphics with KMS (Kernel Mode Setting)

With openSUSE 11.3 we switched to KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) for Intel, ATI and NVIDIA graphics, which now is our default. If you encounter problems with the KMS driver support (intel, radeon, nouveau), disable KMS by adding nomodeset to the kernel boot command line. To set this permanently using Grub 2, the default boot loader, add it to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT kernel default load options line in your /etc/default/grub text file as root and running the terminal command

sudo /usr/sbin/grub2-mkconfig --output=/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

for the changes to take effect. Else, for Grub Legacy, add it to the kernel command line in /boot/grub/menu.lst, also done as root. This option makes sure the appropriate kernel module (intel, radeon, nouveau) is loaded with modeset=0 in initrd, i.e. KMS is disabled.

In the rare cases when loading the DRM module from initrd is a general problem and unrelated to KMS, it is even possible to disable loading of the DRM module in initrd completely. For this set the NO_KMS_IN_INITRD sysconfig variable to yes via YaST, which then recreates initrd afterwards. Reboot your machine.

On Intel without KMS the Xserver falls back to the fbdev driver (the intel driver only supports KMS); alternatively, for legacy GPUs from Intel the "intellegacy" driver (xorg-x11-driver-video-intel-legacy package) is available, which still supports UMS (User Mode Setting). To use it, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf and change the driver entry to intellegacy.

On ATI for current GPUs it falls back to radeonhd. On NVIDIA without KMS the nv driver is used (the nouveau driver supports only KMS). Note, newer ATI and NVIDIA GPUs are falling back to fbdev, if you specify the nomodeset kernel boot parameter.

5.2. systemd: Cleaning Directories (/tmp and /var/tmp)

By default, systemd cleans tmp directories daily as configured in /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf. Users can change it by copying /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf to /etc/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf and modifying the copied file. It will override /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf.

Note: systemd does not honor obsolete sysconfig variables in /etc/sysconfig/cron such as TMP_DIRS_TO_CLEAR.

5.3. systemd: Persistent Journal across Reboots

On openSUSE 12.3, the systemd journal is not persistent across reboots. If you want to enable journal persistence, either create the /var/log/journal directory (as root) or install the systemd-logger package. Installing systemd-logger package will signal a conflict with other syslog implementations, and thus ensuring that the system uses only the systemd journal, if installed.

If your system has been upgraded from openSUSE 12.2 (where /var/log/journal was created by default) and if you want to disable journal persistence, just remove the /var/log/journal directory.

5.4. pwdutils Replaced by shadow

The pwdutils package was replaced by the shadow package. The shadow package is mostly a drop-in replacement, but some commandline options have been removed or changed. See /usr/share/doc/packages/shadow/README.changes-pwdutils for a list of all the changes.

5.5. Configuring Postfix

The SuSEconfig.postfix was renamed as /usr/sbin/config.postfix. If you set sysconfig variables in /etc/sysconfig/postfix or /etc/sysconfig/mail, you must manually run /usr/sbin/config.postfix as root.

5.6. GTK+ Applications Output a Fontconfig Warning

Because the location of the fontconfig files was changed, Emacs and other applications linked against GTK+ output warning messages when started.